An Audience-Interactive Multimedia Production on the Brain

A multimedia planetarium show, “Gray Matters: The Brain Movie,” was created to teach fundamental scientific concepts about the human brain. During the show, the planetarium dome represents a giant brain enclosing the audience. Audience members play the role of neurons in various simulations and representations of brain function. This leads to new ways of thinking about audience interactivity in theaters, with many applications to art and entertainment. Some of the problems of large art/science collaborations are also discussed.